Interview 10 - High blood pressure

Age at interview: 59

Age at diagnosis: 52

Brief Outline:

Discovered following GP general check up.

Reasons the internet to be one of the best places to gain information.

There's a series of pamphlets which were useful in the beginning. The Heart Association pamphlets they produce - I think there are over a dozen of them - little booklets. I have those upstairs and I read each and every one of them about twice, they have all sorts of diagrams and they talk about other things like diet. They explain various procedures and they talk about medicines but not in as detailed a way as I thought I wanted to be informed. 

There are American websites which give you a lot of information and I've been able to get diagrams of the heart. For example I had to undergo anangiography and I got full explanations. The doctors here were very, very good- I got diagrams from them and they drew pictures and so on,but I got a lot of things from the Internet and articles about angiography and also abstracts and full accounts of medications.